Dedicated health and social care workers from across NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde have been recognised at the health board’s annual Celebrating Success Awards.
Teams and individuals were honoured over seven Excellence Award categories during the ceremony at the Radisson hotel in Glasgow city centre last night (Thurs).
They included awards for the Transoral Robotic Service, which was set up at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital (QEUH) in 2022 and provides a minimally invasive option for patients, and for a local Care Home Nursing Support Team which has helped prevent unnecessary hospital admissions from care homes.
Prizes were also handed to the physiotherapy team at Leverndale Hospital for its ‘Meander for Mental Health’ initiative, and to a team of volunteers at Gartnavel Royal Hospital who established a new Hub cafe.
Two special Chair’s Awards of Excellence were presented by NHSGGC Chair Dr Lesley Thomson KC to the Teenage and Young Adult Cancer Team (pictured above) based in the Beatson West of Scotland Cancer Centre and to Dr Mike Basler (below), a Consultant Anaesthetist at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary.
Since 2017, Dr Basler has been helping provide anaesthetic care to patients in Ghana as part of project, Resurge Africa, while organising and leading burns, resuscitation, and regional anaesthesia courses for local staff.
This year’s Gold winners of the Excellence Awards were:
Better Health – Meander for Mental Health
Meander for Mental Health came from the Design in the Dale project led by the physiotherapy team at Leverndale Hospital, with the aim of promoting walking as a way of managing mental health, to reduce the stigma of mental illness and to bring the hospital and its local community together. The project has grown over the past four years and now has two other events, Mambo for Mental Health and Pedal for Progress, and each of the events organised has seen more than 150 participants from the hospital and local community.
Better Care – Transoral Robotic Surgery
The Transoral Robotic Service (TORS) was set up at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in 2022 and provides a minimally invasive option for patients which results in a reduced length of hospital stay, quicker recovery and a reduced functional impact on swallowing. In addition, it can provide a therapeutic surgical option to patients with early-stage oropharyngeal cancers. In the first year, the team treated 25 patients, and this doubled to 50 in 2023. The team are now working on establishing a regional service to provide TORS for other patients in Scotland.
Better Value – Staffbank Service and Digital Psychological Therapies (joint winners)
Digital Psychological Therapies
Reconfiguring some psychological therapy services became a significant challenge due to Covid-19 and long waiting times, but the creation of a centralised team, delivering psychological therapies digitally via the NHS Near Me/Attend Anywhere system has transformed how services are delivered. Since June 2023, when the team went live, they have been able to establish systems and processes which allow them to work flexibly across multiple teams with long waiting time pressures.
Staffbank Service
The Staffbank Service team has provided a vital service in challenging circumstances, ensuring that the needs of patients and service delivery are met in the most appropriate ways and continuity of care. It deals with around 10,000 shifts per week, and has provided a rapid and efficient response to mass recruitment needs, with more than 4,000 Healthcare Support Workers onboarded and hundreds cross-trained, which reduces reliance on the use of agency staff in some services. As well as this, the service was approached by the Public Health Vaccination Programme to support the training of vaccinators and also provided major staffing support to ensure that the schools immunisation programme could proceed.
Better Workplace – Acute Services Professional Admin Transformation Programme
The Acute Services Professional Administration Transformation Programme was set up in 2018 to recognise the central role that administrative services play in supporting patient-centred care, and to ensure the Board’s patient administrative services were operating efficiently and effectively. Last year it was refreshed to highlight administration as a professional career role within Acute Services. The programme has improved training and development opportunities for clinical administration staff and helped them harmonise ways of working and management arrangements.
Nursing and Midwifery – Renfrewshire Care Home Nursing Support Team
The Renfrewshire Care Home Nursing Support team was recognised for its approach to preventing unnecessary hospital admissions from care homes. This team provides services across all 23 older people care homes in Renfrewshire and two residential care homes in Inverclyde that border Renfrewshire. In the year to 31 March 2023, they provided direct assessment to 772 care home residents resulting in 3,048 consultations from which only 8 per cent needed referral to acute services.
Global Citizenship – Dr Ceilidh Dunn
Dr Dunn is a paediatric cardiac physiologist, specialising in congenital heart conditions. Day-to-day she is part of the paediatric cardiac team at the Royal Hospital for Children, but in her spare time she has gone to great lengths to help children with undiagnosed heart conditions in Gambia. In December 2023, she used her own annual leave to fly out to the African country, for the second year in a row, to set up diagnostic services in paediatric cardiology in the Edward Francis Small Teaching hospital, situated in the capital Banjul.
Volunteer – The Hub Cafe Volunteers
Throughout NHSGGC, the value of safe, sociable, patient-focused spaces where people can meet, relax and spend quality time together, is huge, and the creation of such a space within a psychiatric hospital was of particular importance. The Hub Café volunteer project at Gartnavel Royal Hospital was set up to establish such a space and, after the team was recruited, they have successfully delivered every aspect of the new café.
Throughout the evening, 18 other winners were announced across NHSGGC’s local sectors, Health and Social Care Partnerships and other services including Diagnostics, Public Health and Pharmacy.
Additionally, the William Cullen Prize for Innovation was jointly awarded to Judith Roulston, who implemented Treatment Escalation Plans for the Beatson in-patient service as part of the Realistic Medicine work programme, and to Professor Keith Muir and Dr Wazim Izzath for the development of a Thrombectomy service for stroke patients on the QEUH campus.
Meanwhile, the William Cullen Prize for Education was given to Dr Lucy Carrick, a Consultant Psychiatrist and Clinical Director of Gartnavel Royal Hospital.
Dr Carrick’s psychiatry team trains foundation, core and specialist trainees, and feedback has shown the value that has been placed on this.
During the event last night, more than £2,800 was raised for cancer support charity Maggie’s.
Dr Lesley Thomson KC, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde Chair, said: “The NHSGGC Celebrating Success Awards are an opportunity for us to recognise the hard work and incredible dedication shown by our staff and volunteers year-round.
“This year’s winners are fantastic examples of how health and social care staff routinely go above and beyond to ensure patients get the best possible care.
“My personal thanks and congratulations to all of those shortlisted for the significant effort that goes into supporting their colleagues, patients and the wider community.
“Every award winner and nominee should be immensely proud of themselves for the contribution they make to the delivery of healthcare in Scotland.”
You can find details and pictures of the 2024 award winners on our website, including more information on categories and individual nominations: https://www.nhsggc.scot/celebratingsuccess
